THE CRIMINOLOGY OF WHITE COLLAR CRIME"Behind every great fortune is a crime" (Balzac)

Criminologists offer a variety of
explanations for white collar crime, but they all have in common a way they
approach their explanations. They usually start with a disciplinary school
of thought; e.g., biology, psychology, or sociology. This is not the only
starting point which can be taken, but it's as good as any, especially since the
study of white collar crime has so many confusing definitional issues, and a
school of thought, after all, represents the initial starting point of a
vast number of scholars. There is then, the problem of level of analysis
(sometimes called unit of analysis). The traditional units of analysis for
any scientific explanation are: macro-, meso-, and micro-. There are
other, fancier words for these levels, but a macro-level explanation aims to
explain the root causes of something in society itself. A meso-level
explanation tries to find the middle ground, which in white collar crime study
is usually the organizational level, or something in the nature of
organizational life or business culture. Finally, a micro-level
explanation is one at the level of personality, or even biology. It is the
one which focuses almost exclusively on the inner workings of the minds
(thoughts or belief processes) of the individual offenders. The other
approaches don't neglect this, but they do only delve into mental processes by
default or by secondhand. Most American criminology of white collar crime
has been at the meso-level, and has offered socio-psychological explanations at
this level.

The "holy grail" in criminology for many
years has involved the question of whether a general theory can be put together
which explains both white collar crime and ordinary crime. This has been
the quest ever since Sutherland (1940) first raised the question. No such
general theories exist in criminology, although about every four decades (the
last being the 1980s "integrated" theory movement), criminologist take up the
challenge anew. It might be worth mentioning that a general theory ought
to be able to explain not only different types of crime, but provide similar
reasons for why females and males, and minorities and non-minorities commit
crime. This is certainly a tall order, and makes it readily understandable
why so many criminologists are specialists in one type of offender and/or one
type of crime. There are also those who approach the study of white collar
crime from a criminalization or victimological standpoint. Both of these
people tend to perpetuate the endless definitional debates in the field, the
criminalization specialists because they ponder over why so few white collar
criminals get caught, and the victimological specialists because they say we
haven't got any good grasp of the cost or impact.

Nonetheless, every theoretical explanation
has at least one master concept which represents its central idea or thesis.
For scientific purposes, that master concept must be variable. In other
words, a person must be capable of having more or less of it. A fixed,
entrenched personality trait will NOT do. It's not enough to say that
white collar criminals are greedy, that is, unless one invents a scale of
greediness which allows for some range of variation or degree of greed.
Some of the oldest ideas are about fixed traits of offenders. Old ideas
die slowly in criminology, but there are some completely discredited theories.
For example, demonic explanations are totally discredited nowadays, not
because careful research has been carried out on exorcism, but simply because
the idea was a false start and didn't carry the field forward very much.
Another example might be the facial appearance (or physiognomic)
approach, the idea here being that criminals of all kinds tend to have sloping
foreheads, beady eyes, and so forth. C. Ray Jeffery (1990) was pretty much
the last of the famous criminologists who dabbled in these waters.

Psychological theories
exist, some of which are quite good and others of which aren't. An example
of a not-so-good idea is the notion of childhood trauma. This is a
notion most closely associated with Freudian psychoanalysis, although the trauma
literature says the hurt can be physical as well as psychological.
Probably the most amazing (and unbelievable) thing that Freud (1923) said about
criminals (of all kinds) is that they commit crime in order to bring punishment
upon themselves (for some pre-existing sense of guilt). Psychoanalysis is
generally regarded as untestable and improvable by most scientists.
Personality traits which have been most studied include: risk taking,
recklessness, ambitiousness, and egocentricity (Coleman 2006). Risk
taking and recklessness are personality characteristics shared by both white
collar criminals and ordinary criminals, although with ordinary criminals, the
trait is most often referred to by the master concept of impulsiveness (or
inability to defer gratification). The leading theorists of impulsiveness
are Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) who have actually put together a much larger
Low Self Control
theory which tries to overcome the usual criticism of all temperament
theories -- which came first, the trait or the criminality? Gottfredson
and Hirschi (1990) end up arguing that it's the first six years of life which
matter. So, we're back to a Freudian childhood experience explanation.
Wheeler (1992) further argues that risk taking among white collar criminals is
done more intelligently and isn't such a bad thing at all. Similarly, with
the characteristic of ambitiousness, one has to wonder why a hunger for
power and the desire to rise up economically are expected to be correlates of
shameful behavior when they so strongly correlate with admirable behavior (in
most people). Punch (2000) has said, of all the psychological
characteristics, it probably is egocentricity which is the best
explanatory tool, and for white collar criminals, this characteristic is usually
over the top, bordering on paranoid megalomania. Other promising
psychological theories of recent note involve the notion of character.
Character is different from the concept of personality because it isn't so
strongly tied to a temperament (or predisposition toward behavior). A
person's character simply reflects their mood, or nature (good or bad),
and several criminologists have started studying character in recent years
(e.g., Paternoster and Simpson 1996).

Sociological approaches tend to cluster
around the notion that power corrupts, and that the rich and powerful develop
stronger deviant motivations as well as enjoy more deviant opportunities that
come their way. The central, or master, concept in this regard within
sociology is relative deprivation. It refers to a sensation of envy
or jealousy about what other people have. Rich people presumably
experience it strongly. Absolute deprivation (the kind which is associated
with poverty) tends to produce a sense of "deep anger" which manifests itself in
violent crime. Relative deprivation, on the other hand, provokes a
seething, brooding, get-even, kind of resentment. However, this kind of
explanation is really at the socio-psychological level, and most sociological
theories try to explain things at the organizational or societal level. At
the organizational level, the most important thing to remember, as Cressey
(1989) reminded us, is to NOT attribute human capabilities to corporations.
Structures and organizations don't suffer from mental disorders, but they do
develop dysfunctional cultures or environments. A deviant
organizational culture may even exist once all the original people who
created it are long gone. A deviant organizational culture may even
socialize new people into it despite the best intentions of written policies and
procedures. Because a deviant organizational culture can do such things is
the reason why many criminologists (e.g., Braithwaite and Fisse 1990) conclude
that corporations ought to be legally responsible for their actions.
Punishing replaceable people within corporations may be a futile way to control
white collar crime. On the other hand, the entire organization is seldom
involved in corporate crime, but this is the dilemma of sociology involving the
so-called ecological fallacy. People commit criminal acts, not entities
like communities or societies. The further up you go in your level of
analysis, the further away you get from real, flesh-and-blood actors who
actually do things. Nonetheless, there have been numerous attempts by
sociologists to classify deviant organizations, the Needlemans' (1979) typology
of "crime coercive" and "crime facilitative" being the most well-known.

Clinard and Yeager (1980) have summarized
most of the sociological correlates of corporate crime as: economic
climate, political and regulatory environment, level of industry concentration,
style and strength of product distribution networks, product differentiation,
and normative traditions within industries. Of these, the first two are
key. Legitimate economic channels must be blocked or thwarted, and the
political environment must tolerate an aggressive (and possibly deviant) pursuit
of profit. Of course, modern, 21st century Enron et al. cases clearly
illustrate the importance of networks, and alliances between industries as well
as within them.

Practically all the traditional criminological
theories have been applied to white collar crime. A list of the
traditional criminological theories, in rank order of their popularity (high to
low), is as follows: rational choice, social control, social learning,
strain, conflict, and labeling. Routine
activities theory (Felson 2002) is the field's most well-known rational
choice theory, and it focuses upon the absence of capable guardians
and the pool of suitable victims. This variety of rational choice theory
is essentially a classical criminological opportunity theory which assumes
pre-motivated offenders who are simply making a rational choice to get away with
things while they can. Social control theory (Hirschi 1969) has
long dominated the criminological landscape as a popular theory, and it too
assumes pre-motivated offenders, but holds that a weakness in social bonds
(attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief) triggers a release of criminal
inclinations. Learning theory is the approach that Sutherland
(1940) himself invented, and it basically holds that people slowly condition or
reward themselves (along with others) over time in rehearsing or preparing for
the day they commit their big criminal act. Most learning theories focus
on the changing belief systems of offenders, with one variety of the approach
calling them neutralizations, because they are self-learned excuses or
justifications for wrongdoing. Strain theory (Vaughn 1983; Passas &
Goodwin 2004) holds that even good people commit crime whenever they become
confused about the goals and/or means of their material success. This
confused condition is called "anomie" and it produces both general and specific
sensations of relative (status) deprivation throughout society.
Conflict theory (Friedrichs 2007) tends to have a diverse camp of followers,
but usually focuses (like strain theory) on the material (or economic)
conditions of success, and it basically holds that "conflict" causes crime
whenever one powerful group is able to point the finger of blame for
something on another group. Labeling theory (Katz 1988) is the
least popular of criminological theories, but it is rich in "sensitizing
concepts" which shed light on things that other theories don't, like identity
processes and the symbolic meanings some objects have for offenders.

FACTS A THEORY OUGHT TO EXPLAIN

The problem of fitting a theory to the
facts is a big problem in criminology, and this problem is doubled in the field
of white collar crime because no one is exactly certain about the facts.
The following snapshot of data (from Wheeler 1992) is the most
commonly-reproduced table of numbers with acceptable validity and reliability,
and it shows some of the central tendencies as well as variation in
characteristics of offenders by type of offense: